


reassurance

by epilogues



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Light Angst, Secret language, Sort Of, uhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 19:04:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epilogues/pseuds/epilogues
Summary: No one really notices it until the third cycle, but Taako and Lup have their own language.





	reassurance

**Author's Note:**

> as usual, i’m taking taz prompts on my tumblr! (@duckthemundane)
> 
> this was written for the prompt: “Taako shopping trip? Lup and Taako driving the rest of the IPRE crazy?“ and i... sort of followed it? enjoy!

No one really notices it until the third cycle, but Taako and Lup have their own sort of language. It’s almost like sign language, only a bit more subtle, and that’s why it takes three cycles for Lucretia to glance up from her notebook one night and say, “Lup, why do you keep moving your hand over your shoulder like that?”

Lup blinks in surprise for a moment, pausing in the middle of the introduction for the story she was about to tell about her and Taako’s aunt, and lowers her hand to her side quickly. “Twin language,” she explains. “We just kinda… made it up as we grew up.” 

Instead of saying anything, Taako grins and taps his thumb and pinky together twice. Lup laughs, which only further confuses Lucretia. She closes her notebook slightly, tucking her thumb in between the pages to hold her spot, and turns to  actually face the twins. It’s one of the first times she’s hung out with just the two of them, as everyone else is currently out looking for the Light, and she’s momentarily struck by just how similar they look in the eerie blue moonlight of this planet.

“What are you saying?” Lucretia asks. “Could you teach it to the rest of us? It could be helpful in situations where we aren’t able to talk.”

Taako and Lup share a brief look before Taako shakes his head, causing some of his many earrings to clink together softly. “Twin language,” he repeats with a shrug, like that clears it up any. 

Lup purses her lips, then flicks her hand out over the railing of the Starblaster. Taako hums thoughtfully before shaking his head. 

“Yeah, no can do, Luce,” Lup says. 

Lucretia shrugs it off, but later that night, she opens a new notebook dedicated to trying to decipher their code. Her first note reads: “Flicking hand away from body - asking something, for confirmation?”

-

The rest of the crew start to pick up on the language over the next few cycles, but despite everyone’s curious requests to learn even just a bit, Taako and Lup remain secretive. 

It drives the rest of the crew slightly crazy, but the twins don’t really use it often enough for it to be really annoying. However, they also don’t really use it enough for Lucretia to gather any meaningful notes outside of her very first guess. 

Her “Twin Language” notebook remains practically unopened until after the eleventh cycle, which was… well, everyone agrees that it was one of the worst ones yet. 

Merle and Magnus had set off to find the Light of Creation about two months in, once Barry had gotten a rough estimate of its location, but only Magnus had returned. He told the rest of the crew about the strange, quicksand-like terrain that appeared to follow them, and about the apparent lack of the Light in the entire area they’d searched. 

The next ten months had been spent trying to devise a way to stand on top of the quicksand, and Barry and Lup had eventually created a type of levitating snowshoe. Magnus set off again, this time accompanied by Lup, but neither had returned to the ship. 

There were only three weeks between their departure and the arrival of the Hunger, but those three weeks were some of the worst of the journey so far. It had been the first time Lup died, and while everyone took it pretty hard, Taako completely shut down until they left the plane. 

As such, Lucretia can’t help but smile when she sees Lup and Taako reunited the first day of the twelfth cycle. They spend the entire afternoon and night alone, not speaking but signing to each other. Lucretia keeps a respectful distance, of course, but she does pick up on one sign that Lup  keeps repeating over and over - the same movement of passing her hand over her left shoulder that clued Lucretia into the signs in the first place.

Later that night, Lucretia adds a new note to her book: “Hand over left shoulder - comfort/reassurance?” 

-

As the cycles pass by, Lucretia picks up on a few more signs. A thumbs-up under the chin means a sort of congratulations, wiping a hand across the forehead seems to be a light-hearted insult, and flicking a thumbs-down means to shut up. 

However, once they reach the ninety-ninth cycle, deciphering the signs falls far, far by the wayside. Lucretia creates her relic, reluctantly, and watches as the others do the same. She watches as her crewmates - her family - are slowly worn down as they watch the destruction they’ve inadvertently caused. She watches Lup disappear. 

Strangely enough, Lup’s disappearance is what reminds Lucretia of the small, not even half-filled notebook on her desk. Taako wanders around the ship, floating between helping Barry and starting to cook meals that he inevitably abandons. His hands are never still.

Lucretia often sees him flicking his hand out, then slowly withdrawing it, or tapping his index finger against his wrist once or twice before seemingly catching himself. Most often, though, she sees him passing his hand over his left shoulder, almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing until his face falls.

And if Lucretia’s honest, that’s almost what hurts the most. 

So she starts planning, starts writing, starts going through every word she’s written down in the past century and deciding what to keep and what to throw away. She saves the notebook on Taako and Lup’s language for last, and she cries as she places it into Fisher’s tank.

Lucretia doesn’t see Taako for years after she sets his show up. She tries to go watch a show once, but she can’t stand seeing the way he almost, almost moves like there’s someone in the kitchen with him. 

When he, Magnus, and Merle show up at the Bureau, Lucretia can’t breathe for a moment. She gathers herself and welcomes them, and it’s only once they’ve left that she lets herself break down at the way Taako’s hand kept resting just over his left shoulder, slowly passing back and forth. 

-

When Taako breaks the Umbrastaff, the first thing he and Lup do is sign at each other - the same hand over the shoulder movement - and Lucretia knows that nothing is even close to being fixed, that Taako is likely to never forgive what she’s done, that even if they survive this, things will never be the same. But it does ease the ache in her chest just a bit to watch the twins sign again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! feedback is always really appreciated!


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